from the not-the-panacea-you've-been-expecting dept

I know that within newspaper circles it's become popular to claim that we've now entered the era of the paywall. Paywall supporters love to point to the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal -- along with claims from various paywall companies that more and more newspapers are moving over to such a model. However, we've been hearing plenty of stories suggesting that for most every newspaper that isn't a major national or international brand, the paywalls are looking like dismal failures. Very, very, very few (at times, shockingly few) people are signing up, and by setting up the paywall, they're actually losing a fair number of online visitors. This isn't a surprise. As we've been arguing for years, a paywall is the exact wrong strategy for most newspapers, since the real business they're in is building a community and then selling that community's attention. Yet, a paywall makes it much, much harder to build a community, first by putting up a tollbooth, and then making it nearly impossible for readers to share the news and bring others into that community.

So it should come as little surprise that the SF Chronicle here in San Francisco has apparently killed its paywall after just four months. The quickness with which it's been pulled certainly suggests that the number of signups was appallingly low and someone finally did the math and realized what a colossal disaster this was going to be. For your typical metro or regional newspaper, all a paywall really does is open up a huge market for online competitors. It looks like the Chronicle found that out the hard way.

from the virtual-wallet,-virtual-wallet dept

We've written many times in the past about how, thanks to the ridiculous sense of "ownership society" that is often presented to the world around copyright, patents and trademarks, it's unfortunately common to see massive overclaiming of certain rights. That's especially true of trademarks, which really shouldn't be lumped in with patents and copyrights, since they're very very different. Trademarks, as we've noted before, are really about avoiding consumer confusion, so they don't buy one product trusting that it's another product. It is not about "ownership" in any sense. And yet so many companies (and individuals) think that if they get a trademark on a word or phrase, they can basically stop anyone else from ever using it.

The latest example of trademark overreach comes from PNC Bank, who threatened a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for having the gall to use the phrase "virtual wallet" in an article. PNC sent a legal nastygram, telling the SF Chronicle that it must "refrain from misuse of our client's VIRTUAL WALLET trademark." Except, of course, that's hogwash. Nothing in trademark law could possibly make that true, and the Chronicle's James Temple responded appropriately:

Furthermore, he notes that the trademark itself is almost certainly invalid, as the phrase was in widespread common usage for many years before 2008 when the bank sought the trademark (and, ridiculously, the USPTO granted it).

In late 1994, Newsweek published an article titled "The Age of Cybercash" that informed readers: "Your virtual wallet may soon be here."

By the end of 2007, the term "virtual wallet" had appeared more than 700 times in the English press, including in American Banker, the Economist, the New York Times and Consumer Reports.

Nevertheless, the following year, PNC Financial Services Group launched a "Virtual Wallet" product. It sought trademark protection, asking to own the commercial rights to two consecutive words that had been pushed together by the press and industry more than a decade earlier.

Temple goes on to call out others who have sought to abuse trademark law to "homestead" the English language -- including our favorite trademark troll ever, Leo Stoller, who "trademarked" all kinds of words including "stealth," "all goods and services," "chutzpah," and (oh yeah) "Google" which he claimed to have been using since 1981.

As Temple notes, PNC is trying to avoid having the phrase "virtual wallet" be declared generic such that their registered trademark can be eliminated, but if they didn't want that to happen, they probably shouldn't have gone with such an already generic and descriptive phrase.

from the who's-stealing-from-whom-now? dept

There was some hubbub earlier this month when sex columnist Violet Blue discovered that one of her old columns for the SF Chronicle had been altered by the Chronicle's online site, SFGate.com. She was upset that the changes implied the article said the opposite of what it actually said -- and found it odd that, beyond that, all the links and comments were missing, and the story was now spread out over several pages. This resulted in some investigations, with venture capitalist Tim Oren pointing out that this appeared to be the work of a company called Perfect Market, a well-funded startup (funded, in part, by the Tribune Company), who had partnered with various newspaper sites to game Google's search results. As Oren notes:

The keyword and ad-stuffed dead end pages apparently produced by Perfect Markets's technology are isomorphic, from a search company's point of view, to those created by more questionable tactics such as scraping. The intent is the same: to spam the index. This is the behavior that routinely gets questionable sites shoved to Google's back pages, or banished altogether. One has to wonder just how long this type of abuse will be tolerated, simply because it's being practiced by a recognized media outlet.

Now, there are a few ironies here. First, with so many newspaper people (misleadingly) claiming that Google "steals" from them with Google News, to then find out that many of those same newspaper are trying to game Google with highly questionable tactics -- basically proves that the newspapers are lying. They clearly want more Google traffic, and they're willing to go to ridiculous lengths to get it.

Second, for all the talk of how no one can do investigative reporting without newspapers being around, it's fascinating to see this story broken open by some bloggers and commenters -- rather than any newspaper. That says something, doesn't it?

In the meantime, it appears that Perfect Market is going into damage control mode, contacting GigaOm, and trying to spin the whole thing, by insisting that it's really just trying to "delight our customers and users with innovative new content experiences." The company also claims that it's not "spamming" search engines but that it provides "contextual navigation to relevant related content and topics so the user can browse the publishers vast content library rather than creating dead ends." Except, in this case, the "innovative new content experience" actually did lead to a "dead end," rather than pointing to the original article, which included the proper details, links to other sources, and the comments and discussion that happened with the article.

While it's certainly not as nasty as typical search engine spammers, it's difficult to see this as anything other than an attempt to game Google by questionable means. Google has had no qualms about pulling high profile companies like BMW from its index in the past. It will be interesting to see if it will do the same with some of these newspapers who appear to be pushing the boundaries.

from the follow-the-discussion dept

First off, before someone brings it up in the comments, I'll point out that the following post refers to the views of various columnists at the SF Chronicle, rather than any sort of discussion among those who have any real impact on the SF Chronicle's strategy. However, it is quite amusing to see the "stages of Google grief" showing up on the editorial pages of the struggling San Francisco newspaper who has had to rid itself of hundreds of reporters lately. Back in March, columnist David Lazarus (who apparently is no longer at the paper) vented his frustration about the internet by suggesting that newspapers get rid of free content entirely, with the goal of blocking off so-called moochers like Google News (despite the fact that, yes, Google News actually sends the Chronicle more readers). Then, in May came the bizarre suggestion on the SF Chron editorial pages that Google had a social or moral obligation to simply hand money over to newspapers. That got lots of people laughing, so now, yet another columnist at the Chron has adjusted the thinking to suggest that rather than just hand over money, Google should buy some newspapers, but then just leave them alone, noting that Google would probably make for a better newspaper boss than Rupert Murdoch. This seems to be sort of the full circle Google of thinking here. First, denial that Google is an opportunity to actually drive more business to newspapers. Then, anger at Google and a plan to block it off. Then there's the bargaining/begging phase where they suggest Google simply owes them money. Next comes depression (represented by all the layoffs) and finally acceptance that Google as a buyer could be the savior for newspapers.